The 10 Quickest Ways to Improve Your Website

Regardless of how good your current website it, I'm confident it can be better. In fact, on my website, I'm constantly testing new ideas to improve it. I test different colors, different headlines, different pictures, and so on. And each time, I learn ways to improve.

Below I summarize the 10 key aspects of your website that you should review and improve over time.

1. Look and Feel

The look and feel of your website is much more important than you might realize. Because when visitors go to your site, it's critical that their first impression is positive.

Think for a minute about who your customers are and what they are seeking. Then cater to them. For example, the look and feel of Porsche's website is extremely cool and elegant. Conversely, the look and feel of the Ben & Jerry's website is much more animated and fun (right now it's showing cows drinking on the beach).

Both websites do a great job of conveying the image in which they want customers to view them. Make sure that the look and feel of your website does the same.

2. Copywriting

I'm sure following situation happens to you (since it happens to me all the time): I go to a company's website, I read the homepage, and I still don't know what the company does.

So, I end up going to the "About Us" page to read more and to try to decipher what it is that the company does.

Importantly, I'm the exception. Few other visitors will invest the time to figure out what your company does. Rather, if they don't immediately "get it" and you don't immediately show them how you will benefit them, they'll leave and be gone forever.

A quick tip here is to use compelling headlines. For example, if your website sold tires, a great headline would be: "See Our Selection Of Over 500 Brands of Tires at the Guaranteed Lowest Prices." This is pretty much what all customers are looking for (selection and best price), so this headline lets visitors quickly know what the company does and that they are in the right place.

3. Navigation

I'm sure your website has many pages, and it's your job to make it as simple as possible for your visitors to find the pages they want.

Navigation should be done on a top and/or left navigation bar, using links at the bottom of your website AND within the body text of all pages of your site.

4. Accessibility

More and more people are using devices other than computers (particularly mobile phones and tablets) to access websites. Make sure your website is accessible from all of these devices or you will unwittingly be turning away new customers.

5. Quality Content

Website visitors have come to expect that your website will include quality content or information. For example, if your website has articles, they shouldn't be "fluff" - they need to include actionable advice that shows visitors that you know more than they do.

And clearly, having typos and grammatical errors will also turn off site visitors and prospective customers.

Think about the information you need to convey to customers to better solve their needs and differentiate from the competition. While some of this information is compelling verbiage about your company, more of it should be information that's truly helpful to customers and makes them feel they made the right choice by visiting your website.

6. Amount of Content

The amount of content you include on your website is important for two reasons.

The first is that the more content you have on your website, the more preference search engines like Google will give your site when ranking it for desired keywords.

The second is that if customers are considering doing business with your company, they will want to learn more and more about it. Having a 5 or 10 page website clearly won't allow you to do this (you can start with a small website, but you need to add to it over time).

7. Interactivity

Having a blog on your website helps solve both your website's need for amounts of content (#6) and interactivity (#7).

With regards to amount of content, adding a daily or weekly blog post entry will allow your website to constantly grow in size. This will boost your website's search rankings and give you more keyword opportunities to rank on (since each blog post might rank for certain keyword search terms).

With regards to interactivity, having a blog allows customers and prospective customers to interact with you. It gives you the opportunity to solicit feedback, which provides quick and easy market research.

Your blog also gives you a voice. Here's why this is important. People prefer to buy from people and not faceless companies. While your main website can have a professional, corporate look and feel, your blog gives your customers a look into your personality, and can encourage rapport and sales.

8. Prove that You are Worthy

Your website must prove that you are a worthy company, since many of your visitors may have never heard about you or your company, and there is a natural skepticism consumers have against companies they find online.

Unfortunately, overcoming this skepticism is not as easy as simply stating "we are great." Rather, you need to prove that you are worthy.

You can accomplish this by including any or all of the following on your website:

Media mentions (in which media your company has been featured)

Credibility logos (e.g., a logo of the Better Business Bureau with a link to your BBB rating)

Client logos, names, testimonials and/or case studies showing you have performed quality work

Industry associations and groups to which you belong

Certifications you and/or members of your team hold

9. Have Multiple Calls to Action

Even though all of us have grown accustomed to going online to find new products and services to buy, the way each of us likes to buy is different.

Some of us like to buy online. Others like to fill out an online contact form. Others like to call a toll free number. And so on.

It is your job to ensure you have multiple ways in which visitors can contact you to learn more about buying your products or services.

The key here is to ensure visitors have to think as little as possible. The idea layout influences visitors to take the desired actions. For example, if the goal of one of your web pages is to get the visitor to give you their email address, having the email box near the top of the page, with a clear headline above it in a big font, will yield much better results than the same email box on the bottom left corner of the page with a small headline.

Consider using a heat map program that can show you exactly how visitors are interacting with your website; what they are looking at, what they are clicking on, etc. As you can imagine, this information enables you to make significant improvements to your site.

From reading these 10 key website elements, ideally you will have identified at least a few improvements you can make right away. Also, please realize that improving your website is an ongoing process. You should always be trying and testing new ideas, so your website keeps getting better and better.

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